Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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You’ll Know They Are Christians By Their Love

Here’s another disgusting email sent to Mikey Weinstein, sent by a nice churchgoing lady who called Mikey on the phone to tell him that she and her friends are praying for all the women involved with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to get breast cancer. Seriously.

Mickey Wienstien, we called you on the weekend to advice you that our womens prayer circle at our church will be ending your wickedness against Christ Jesus and his anointed of the USA in our military. In America which is Jesus’ country we can pray all we want for anything we want. you hung up on us and were rude to our leader. but will that stop us or Christ Jesus? No it will not and never could have, wicked Mickey. Our prayer circle has never failed to acheive our hosts granting of the scripture we pray. for direct intervention against you as you are a true demon to America. Luke 9:1 We will not stop our prayers until you stop the evil you do with Lucifer on a daly basis. Luke 9:1 But not against you Mickey. We know by your internet site and your book who it is to be. Now for our prayer, we pray that the women who work in your MFRR and the women in your family will befall fast moving breast cancer which can not everbe cured. We pray this for Leah Bruton, and Becki Miller, Patricia Corigan, Chris Rodda, Edie Disler, Vicky Garrison, Kristin Leslie, Melinda Moeton and Joan Slish. And you evil clan too, we pray this for Bonnie Wiensten and Amanda and Amber Wienstein and the woman lawyers Cariline Mitchel and Katherin Ritchy and all women of all who work at with for Military Freedom Against Religon Foundation. know that we pray and pray hard all the days until you stop your destruction of our American army and accept Christ Jesus as Lord and join His army.

See, when Jesus said to turn the other cheek and love those who do evil, what he really meant was to pray that they get cancer.

Ironically, if someone had called upon any other deity or supernatural force to inflict breast cancer on people, these same women would be accusing them of practicing witchcraft. But because they’re doing it in the name of Jeebus, it’s somehow holy.

Are you positive this isn’t some sort of joke? This is on the verge of ‘comic book villainy’.

Yeah, I don’t usually buy it when people claim that things like this were planted by the opposition to make them look bad, but in this case I’d almost be open to that argument. This thing is just cartoonishly vile; it reads like a caricature.

I definitely see the witchcraft angle. On one hand, I think it might be amusing to report this email as evidence of witchcraft to some preacher. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to encourage an actual Inquisition that involves actual burnings. We’ve got more than enough of that going on in the world right now, especially given all the posts I’m seeing about it, lately.

I know a fair few witches (okay, wiccans/pagans but they call themselves witches or wytches) and none of them would even consider casting a spell for someone without that person’s knowledge AND consent. They believe that whatever you do comes back to you times three, so who’d want to even try anything impracatory?

Wow, they hedged their bets and prayed for a cancer – something that’s at least got some chance of occurring on its own – rather than a divine lightning-bolt or an angel with a flaming sword. Obviously, they’re as much believers as I am.

This doesn’t smell right. I can see one Christian lady, or one member from any group, promoting such evil; but her entire prayer circle making such pleas when they’re together? I’d love to hear more about the church(es) they attend if this were true where I’m guessing it’s one lady lying. One very hateful that is.

Although come to think of Judea of century Zero BC / AD was ruled by a Jewish monarch – King Herod – as a client kingdom -last of the Hasmonean dynasty if memory serves.

Historically, there has never been a *nation* called Palestine, that being a provincial name applied to a geographic area ruled by others such as the British mandate and Ottoman province.

There have been at least two nations called Israel – the current small Jewish nation created in 1948 and surviving despite constant attempts to wipe it off the map by the Arabs and the former Jewish Kingdom that split from the original Davidic one ruled by the Biblical / Toranic Kings Saul, David, Solomon and their numerous successors.

Here’s an ironic example of the level of denialism we deal with when it comes David Barton fans. Forest Church mostly edited a book predominately dedicated to the publication of a key set of founding documents related to the church-state issue (Church provides minimal commentary). Linked here is my review of that book, which I wrote seven years ago.

The other day a Barton fan named George Holder wrote the following as a comment post in my review as a reaction to another commenter raising the so-called Jefferson Bible topic:

As for Jefferson cutting up Bibles, please read “The Jefferson Lies” by David Barton and you’ll find a wealth of source material as to what Jefferson did with those two Bibles and why!

Ironic because rather than read the source material like the so-called Jefferson Bible or what Mr. Church presents in the book I reviewed, he’s advocating we instead filter those primary source documents through a liar and fraud like David Barton. A classic display of someone demonstrating right wing authoritarianism which illustrates the systemic defect of conservative Christianism.

Trackbacks

[…] As I’m sure you could guess, this doesn’t sit well with some Christians. Thanks to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, here is perhaps the most vile piece of hate mail I have ever seen. Mickey Wienstien, we called you […]